Free things to in Barcelona
January 30th, 2010Timeout.cat have put together a useful list of free things to do in Barcelona. Free theatre, festival, museums, concerts, dancing, even food. More here
Briefs
Articles in ‘Briefs’
Best budget hotels in Barcelona
September 23rd, 2009Barcelona isn’t as cheap as it used to be and accommodationcan sometimes work out quite pricey. The Guardian has compiled a list of its best budget hotels in Barcelona. All for under €100. Number 1, The Hotel España, a stunning jewel of Catalan Modernism, just around the corner from La Rambla. More here
The decline of Les Rambles
May 24th, 2009
Excellent article from the Guardian on the fall from grace of what was once Barcelona’s best loved street. “Drunken tourists, desperate prostitutes and petty crooks have rendered it charmless, tawdry and dangerous.”
The article also quotes La Vanguardia in a similar tone “A dark boulevard where drunks impose their style, where wallets disappear and there are fights and muggings,” it reported. “The sensation is of chaos, of a lost city. Barcelonans are turning their backs on it.”
Barcelona fishing industry dying
May 15th, 2009
Excellent article from the Metropolitan on the catastrophic decline of Barcelona’s and Badalona’s once thriving fishing industry as a result of overfishing, effluent plastic and heavy metal pollution.
Read In Barcelona Metropolitan
“Fifteen years ago, there were 80 fishing boats in the Badalona fleet,” said Ramón Costa. “Five years ago, there were 40. Last year there were 15. Now, the fleet is down to only eight boats. Simply put, there aren’t enough fish left.”
Birding pals in Barcelona
May 14th, 2009The Birdingpal website gives birders the opportinity to travellers to go out with local birders. Just look for a birder in Barcelona and email them and I presume share any transport costs.
Birdingpal.org
Description of day out
Birds of Barcelona (IbNat)
Dangers in Barcelona
May 13th, 2009These sites have a list of potential dangers and scams awaiting the visitor to Barcelona. Although the city must be one of the safest cities in the world, it has it fair share of pickpockets, bag snatchers and scallywags fed by large pockets of poverty, and non-violent crime in the tourist areas is pretty common. Common sense will avoid most problems. Outside the tourist honey pots, the chance of anything happening to you is extremely unlikely.
Yahoo answers
Virtual tourist
Anniversary of the Tragic Week
May 5th, 2009
El País commentorates the 100th anniversary of the Tragic Week (July 25 – August 2, 1909) in this article.
Read
The Tragic Week was a series of bloody clashes between the army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia, backed by the anarchists, socialists and republicans. The only way that the authorities managed to stop the revolt from spreading to the rest of Spain was by falsely blaming it on Catalan separatism. More on this soon
Tragic Week – Wikipedia
Trees in Barcelona
April 27th, 2009
What Barcelona lacks for in parks and green area, it partly makes up for with its trees, particularly those plants along the city’s streets.
According the Council there are:
- More than 151,000 trees on the city’s streets and avenues. Sant Martí and the Eixample, with 30,788 and 22,090 trees respectively, are the districts with most trees in Barcelona. In the rest of the city -with the exception of Ciutat Vella and Gràcia, which have an urban structure that makes planting difficult- there are approximately 12,000 to 15,000 street-lining trees.
- There are 141 species of street- lining trees in Barcelona. 11 main species represent 77% of the total number of specimens. The most common is the London plane (Platanus x hispanica), with 50,000 specimens. These are followed by the European Hackberry (Celtis australis), with 18,460 specimens and further behind -with between 8,000 and 4,000 specimens – by the Japanese pagodatree (Sophora japonica), the Lombardy poplar (Populus nigra ‘Italica’), the elm (Ulmus pumila), the tipuana (Tipuana tipu), the black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), the bottle tree (Brachtchiton populneus), the chinaberry (Melia azedarach) and, with fewer than 4,000 specimens, the glossy privet (Ligustrum lucidum) and the box elder (Acer negundo). Lots more information here
- There are also some 5,000 palm trees in Barcelona
Allotments in Barcelona
April 27th, 2009
The council has this useful page showing details of allotments in Barcelona. They are aimed at people aged 65 and over and are seriously oversubscribed. Despite the official propoganda the council really haven’t invested enough in allotments. There are 11 sites providing allotments for a few hundred pensioners in the city. They should create more.
Trotsky in Barcelona
April 22nd, 2009Another quote. Trotsky was escorted under arrest through the port of Barcelona in 1916. He wrote about the city in his diary:
“Big Spanish-French kind of city. Like Nice in a hell of factories. Smoke and flames on the one hand, flowers and fruit on the other”
